Where is Eva Price now?

When Eva Price told her parents she was leaving her prestigious job at ABC News after five years to follow her dream of becoming a Broadway producer, they were stunned.

"I'll never forget the look on their faces," said Ms. Price, who got the theater bug at the age of 8 after seeing her first show, South Pacific, and spent her youth in summer theater camp and the high-school drama club.

They didn't worry long. Ms. Price networked her way into her first Broadway show in 2006, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. She raised her allotment—$500,000—for the production in two months, and the show recouped its investment. Since then she has produced 16 shows both on and off Broadway, and on tour. Together, 50% of her productions, which range from The Addams Family to Colin Quinn's Long Story Short, have recouped their investment, well above the industry standard of 30%.

"I don't know how to sit still," said Ms. Price, who is lead producer on this spring's Peter and the Star Catcher and a producer on the fall revival of Annie, among other projects.

Her specialty is finding ways to mount shows for less. Ms. Price took over a flailing touring show, Irving Berlin's I Love a Piano, and reconfigured it, cutting its weekly running cost to $35,000, nearly half what it was. The show recouped in eight months and returned 160% to investors.

"She's competing at a level beyond her years and is being taken very seriously by a very cynical theater community," said Stuart Oken, a Broadway producer who ran Disney Theatrical Productions for nine years.